Stitch (Back) In Time: Denim Hub That Had All Your Clothing Needs Sewn Up

Whiff Of Nostalgia And Wistful Story Of A Past That’s Barely Made It To The Present. A New TOI Series. Our First Stop, Mohan Singh Place, Once The Go-To Place For ‘Branded’ Jeans At An Affordable Price

- Priyangi.Agarwal

Standing near a pile of denim rolls at his well-lit shop, 66-year-old Muhammad Abdullah says his tailoring and draping shop at Mohan Singh Place near Connaught Place gave the appearance of a premier showroom in the 1970s. Glassed in and with mirrors, it drew customers from across the country. All that has gone now.

“My father, Maqbool Ahmad, opened this tailoring shop in 1974. As a teenager he learnt the trade at a renowned tailoring shop in Mumbai’s Colaba. In the 1970s and ’80s, only a few shops sold the exorbitantly priced imported jeans. But the handful of shops at Mohan Singh Place, we among them, specialised in stitching customised denim pants at an affordable price,” narrated Abdullah, showing old pictures of his father at the shop.

Without today’s showrooms of global brands and online sales still a generation away, Mohan Singh Place was the most sought after destination for those with jeans on their shopping lists. Located between PVR Rivoli and Hanuman Mandir, Mohan Singh Place on Baba Kharak Singh Road, Mohan Singh Place earned a reputation across the country in the’80s for affordability and service, the latter underlined by a couple of shops offering counterfeit designer labels to be sewn on the back of jeans to give them the branded look.